It’s pretty simple, really. I learned all 87 rules in the NHL 2009 – 2010 rulebook in 107 days leading up to the Winter Olympics on February 12, 2010. Since then I've covered the entire IIHF Rulebook and I'm now up to the NHLPA's Collective Bargaining Agreement. Sure, I tried finding non-hockey related hobbies, but it's hard to find book clubs that want to read every hockey book ever written.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Put the Infraction-Related Uniform Down and Walk Away

Major peeve alert: I have to interrupt my viewing of the US-Canada gold medal game tomorrow to take my mom to the train station. Alert to the authorities: if you catch a British Racing Green Mini Cooper doing 90 down Cornell tomorrow, just make note of my license plate and mail me the ticket. I don't care if I mow down trees, bicyclists and small dogs that would fit in my handbag. I'm not stopping.

This is so much easier than the NHL Rulebook: Rule 201, Equipment, has three sections, totalling three sentences. All equipment except helmets, gloves and goalkeeper's pads shall be worn under the uniform. Infractions related to the wearing of equipment shall be penalized under Rule 555 (Illegal or Dangerous Equipment, player is ruled off ice and team is given a warning).

Hey, at least it doesn't require an imaginary line: Rule 222, Player's Stick. The player's stick blade may be curved, and the curvature shall be restricted in such a way that the distance of a perpendicular line, measured from a straight line drawn from the heel to the end of the blade, shall not exceed 1.5 cm.

The game: This is a lot like the NHL Rulebook, in that it assumes you know how to get dressed and keep your crap together under the uniform and if you don't, off you go to fix it. It's like a grown up version of learning to tie your shoes. You don't get in trouble, your mom just makes you stop running around the playground so you can tie them.

Life: At 42, there are certain items of clothing that I myself have self-censored from my closet, my own warning for failure to wear the uniform correctly, if you will. These include: thong underwear (never wore them anyway, too T for Tacky), mini-anything (shorts, skirts, etc.), concert t-shirts, and stripper heels (never wore them, at 5'9" my center of gravity is already wobbly, five-inch heels are trouble waiting to happen). On the professional front, I also have some "I won't even do that no matter how old I get" attire choices: a super-short haircut that might look professional but which has the tendency to prompt male colleagues to make politically incorrect remarks about your sexuality around the water cooler, worn with orthopedically correct heels that are practical but screamin' ugly and a boxy suit that hides any shred of my figure. Oh, and gray hair. I'm trying it now while I grow it out and let me just say, it might possibly be the worst hair choice since the senior year perm debacle. Come summer, it's outta' here.

About Me

I’m Samantha and I’m a hockey addict. It wasn’t always this way. Until I was 12, I’d never even seen a hockey game. I grew up in Arizona, before the Phoenix Coyotes, in the pre-historic era known as the seventies. Enter the eighties, which coincided with the sports event of the century. On February 22, 1980, the United States men’s hockey team defeated the Russians. I was a pre-teen, oblivious to what that game meant, until it interfered in my ability to hang out at the mall. My father had agreed to chauffeur me…after he was done watching the game. I stomped to my room in rebellion. But somewhere in the first period the yelling and stomping overpowered my REO Speedwagon record. So, I relented and the rest is history. As we approach the 30th anniversary of that victory, I have shamefully come to realize I love a game to which I don’t know the rules. 30 years and I don’t even know what a hat trick is -- unacceptable. That, fellow hockey nerds, is coming to an end with this blog.